


The Comfort of Closeness

by TheArcher



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 07:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArcher/pseuds/TheArcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek wasn't always distant and untouchable. He used to be a very touchy person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Comfort of Closeness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Swing Set in December (swing_set13)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swing_set13/gifts).



> My first little contribution to the teen wolf fandom and my gift to Jen's pack!

Derek used to be a very touchy person.

He’s never been especially talkative but you could always tell how much he liked someone by the random little touches he’d let them have. A bump of a shoulder. A hand sliding down their arm. A subconscious way of him connecting to people. Sharing himself with them.

He had a large family with a wide arrangement of personalities and boundaries, but they all knew the significance of Derek casually leaning against them, letting someone else take his weight.

When Kate came, she always touched him first. Derek didn’t like other people initiating contact, if he was going to touch you he would do it on his terms, but Kate did it so slowly, stealthily, so it felt like he had no choice but to let them stay. It was like her hands had been there for awhile and he noticed too late to stop them.

After the fire he couldn’t touch Laura. Or maybe Laura couldn’t touch him. Both of them keeping their distance, repelled against each other like similar magnets. He had let Kate touch him and his life and his family. He could still feel her fingers burning on his arms and fuck if that shouldn’t have been a clue. He couldn’t touch Laura when he could still feel Kate all over him, everywhere he went. He had thought it was chemistry at first, but it was anything but. It was the sound of a jackhammer on concrete, a comforting rumble from far away but every step closer shook him more and more until he saw exactly what was being broken.

After a year in New York, he and Laura started touching more and they hugged for the last time days before she left forever.

Derek doesn’t know if he’s a touchy person anymore or if that was taken away with the other parts of him. All the parts that didn’t have the strength to keep going. He is the barest bones of what he used to be, only the essential parts, only what is needed to be strong. And right now he sees touch as a weakness and he doesn’t think it’ll ever be a comfort again.

  
But he’s wrong.

  
And slowly, one by one, day by day, the pack he made out of necessity is going to stay together by choice, tied together with love. Somehow, through cookies and movies and sarcasm, they’ll figure out the best way to bring the comfort of closeness back to him.


End file.
